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Unless you're in an environment with alot of blowing dust or salt spray (like the beach or in the desert) there's no reason to use a filter to "protect" your lens.

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Thanks kindly for the advice.

I really am quite a novice and do appreciate the input.


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Idaho:
Here's one of Cookie's long eared owl images taken through an absolute sea of intervening twigs. I would not have even snapped the shutter, but she likes it because the eyes are relatively sharp.
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This was a Canon EOS 70D ISO-100 using a 500 mm at F4 and 1/160 sec. Essentially no motion on a dark gray 5 below day so a speedy shutter was not an issue

The closer one is to the offending interference the more likely ones success. Get several yards away and the auto focus features will often switch to the closest object at the last second. Manual is your friend if one wants to penetrate jungle. Auto focus is likely best though for your action sports. Get closer than ones lens can focus and there's not chance of the system dialing in on your fence.

Cookie's got lots of shots of deer where a single mid-route twig is sharp as a tack and the actual target is lost to the cosmos. One's lowest value F-stops reduce the depth of field and also help with resolving around intervening objects.

Keep em coming. You've got some good gear,


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A couple other tips that should be mentioned...

That lens is soft when stopped way down. So you'll want to keep aperture in the range where you get best sharpness (usually). Experiment to find the best/acceptable range.

Especially on my non-vibration-resistant lenses, I find that the use of a monopod results in much less motion-induced blur, when shooting fast moving sports with a long focal length lens.



"There's more to optics than meets the eye."--anon

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Thanks again.

Yes, the owl is stunning. I wish I could create art like that.

I am ashamed to say, I have no eye for composition. I simply try to preserve some of what I see.

I sure wish I could have gotten hands on my camera today at work. A moderate sized hawk took a pigeon out of the air just outside the door beside my desk. The hawk settled on the ground about thirty five feet from an open garage door and proceeded to calmly pluck and consume the pigeon while we occosionally stopped to watch.

Bright mid day sunlight, would have made some great exposures with the 300 mm.

Last edited by Idaho_Shooter; 06/29/16.

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These were all taken with my Nikon 70-300 VR. I'm not saying they're anything special, but I believe they at least show that it can produce decent enough pics much of the time. The last couple of years I've used my 70-200 for sports, so my 70-300 sports samples are buried somewhere in electronic land. But trust me when I say that for outdoor sports, the 70-300 is more than capable. That shot of the coyote was taken handheld at close to 100 yards out and it's heavily cropped. The brush was so high it covered that dog's entire body. I tried to follow an occasional flash of tail, then focus and fired every time it jumped. The pic isn't perfect, but figure if the lens can lock on and capture a jumping coyote at almost 100 yards, or a flying hummingbird, a softball player running home would be a drop in the bucket. Your shots are fine. Practice and more practice will make them even better. Oh, and click over to 'M' instead of that Sports Mode and have some fun smile


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Those are some great shots. Yes, the coyote is spectacular.

I also like the egret. (Well that large white wading bird grin)

We have a couple pair of pea fowl. It could be fun chasing them around with the camera.


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There's two kinds of photo's you can take. Photo's that please you and other's you might show them to and photo's taken for other photographer's! Other photographer's about 99% of the time can always find something in a photo that they think would make it better! Nature of the beast< looking for perfection!You can chase that goal but probably never catch it. In the soft photo of your grand daughter, you could probably fix i quite a bit with a bit of editing. I know on a photo site I'm on, even the best photographer' claim every photo need's editing, they are looking for what they would like to think they saw rather than what they really saw! I have been amazed at what some of them found fault with and some they didn't! If you get caught up in that, your gonna have all kinds of money tied up in chasing perfection that probably doesn't really exist, using equipment you don't really have the skill to take advantage of! I think I'd go with what you have now and learn to make them work, I don't think they are really all that bad. Especially starting out, don't fault the equipment, it's more likely the operator!













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Oh yes, it is definitely the operator.

I doubt I will ever acquire the skill to use this rig to its fullest potential.

And when I scrape up another $1000 to $1500 to put towards a hobby.......well there are still a couple rifles I am jonesin for.

But still, I am eager to learn and improve my skills with this Nikon and lens set. I really do appreciate all the advice offered here.


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The great thing about digital is that once you've bough the equipment, learning to shoot is cheap because they are no consumables.

Try going to your local library and checking out books on photography. The books from the film days will still be useful to the extent they discuss composition. Don't get bogged down in the technical details--at first, let the camera do the heavy lifting with regard to light metering and white balance--instead, concentrate on composition. My rule of thumb is simple: if it looks good, it is good. When you make a picture that looks good, remember how you did it and apply those same practices to subsequent pictures.

One key to taking good photographs also is found in target shooting: don't take a bad shot just to have taken a shot. If you're not happy with the composition in the viewfinder, move. If the light isn't good, wait. Try taking pictures from a kneeling or sitting position to introduce a new perspective. Take your zoom, set it at one focal length, and commit to taking pictures with only that focal length for an afternoon. When you get home, edit your pictures right away if you can so you can remember what you were doing when you shot the pictures you like. Try to learn something new each time you take the camera out.

For nature photography tips it is hard to beat Art Wolfe's books. "The New Art of Nature Photography" and "The Art of the Photograph" are both excellent books and relatively inexpensive. The best money I've ever spent on photography I spent on lenses, and on books. The more you look at good photographs, the better your own will become.

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AZ:
Nice job on the egret! Tough to get detail on white and on black creatures.

Idaho Shooter:
Just start packing the camera every where and start shooting. Once in a while a gem pops out. Mostly I just do the driving for Cookie. We might have stopped 500 times to try for great blue herons. On 501 we got one that actually sat there and went about fishing. Made the whole day worth it.

Taking Cookie out to a desert water hole for Saturday and Sunday with potential for feral horses, bighorn, deer, coyotes, badgers, and pronghorn. Could just as easily end up with nothing, but it's another reason to get out. I'll probably be off a mile or so just looking at the view.


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Originally Posted by 1minute
AZ:
Nice job on the egret! Tough to get detail on white and on black creatures.

Idaho Shooter:
Just start packing the camera every where and start shooting. Once in a while a gem pops out. Mostly I just do the driving for Cookie. We might have stopped 500 times to try for great blue herons. On 501 we got one that actually sat there and went about fishing. Made the whole day worth it.

Taking Cookie out to a desert water hole for Saturday and Sunday with potential for feral horses, bighorn, deer, coyotes, badgers, and pronghorn. Could just as easily end up with nothing, but it's another reason to get out. I'll probably be off a mile or so just looking at the view.



Thanks 1 Minute! It was all I could do not to blow that bird out. Spot metering might have helped, maybe not. Still hard (for me anyway) trying to get detail out of all that white on a bright day. Look forward to seeing Cookie's pics!!

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Funny this subject is talked about. I just bought a Tamron 70-300 AF tele macro lens for my Nikon d3100. I bought it used for $90 at a real camera store. They had a Sigma and a Nikkor in the same 70-300. I have not taken any pictures with it yet but wonder if I should have bought the NIkkor for $125. Did I buy a good lens cause some here say it is "soft" I can take it back if I want I guess. Any opinions on this lens is appreciated. Thanks, ihookem.


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For $90, retail, my expectations would be for a low budget lens.


"There's more to optics than meets the eye."--anon

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It was on the used shelf. I think it is about 8 yrs old. The Nikkor was $125 used. We will see. The comments on the lens is very high and some posted pics cause they were impressed with the lens. The pics however were not very good at all, even blurry but the photographers were happy. Dont know if I will be happy cause I'm fussy about pictures. We will see, today is a rainy foggy day so ,,..


But the fruits of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,faithfulness, Gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law. Galations 5: 22&23
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